Many people have contributed to eLearning @ AMPD, including students, staff and faculty. Together we are building a community of practice dedicated to ensuring engaged learning environments integrating technology in the classroom and online.
Natalie Almosa
Graphic Design, AMPD
Natalie Almosa is a graphic designer currently studying towards a Bachelors Degree at York University and Sheridan College’s joint program in Graphic Design (YSDN). Specializes in web design, print work, illustration, and typography. Natalie assists with AMPD and AIF’s eLearning team by providing visuals to support faculty and students in the department.
Reiner Bello
Video production, AMPD
Reiner received his MFA in Film Production at York University and his BA in Film and Theatre at the University of Winnipeg. His short film Roof Jumpers was a finalist in the inaugural CBC Short Film Competition. Reiner has been working with AMPD and AIF’s video production for the past four years, which includes pre-production, cinematography, and post-production (editing, graphic animation).
Bridget Cauthery
Contract Faculty, Dance
Dr. Bridget Cauthery is a dance and cultural studies scholar focusing on the impact of post/neo-coloniality and the processes of globalization on contemporary and popular dance practices in the Global North. In 2016 she was the recipient of a twelve-month research leave to complete the manuscript for her forthcoming book Choreographing the North (McGill-Queens University Press) that examines eleven contemporary dance works from the northern and southern hemispheres that take the North as their source and inspiration. In 2015 Bridget received Academic Innovation funding for a new blended learning course that uses social media to manufacture undergraduate student engagement in critical theory. In 2014 Bridget won the inaugural AMPD eLearning Teaching Award for her course Dance, Film & Culture. Since 2008 she has been lecturing in the Dance Department at York University and in the Theatre School at Ryerson University and was appointed to York’s Faculty of Graduate Studies in 2014.
Maureen Dorey
Contract Faculty, Screenwriting
Maureen Dorey has taught Feature Screenwriting at York since 2010. She is a free-lance story editor, analyst and mentor who helps writers find their voices, shape their stories and renew their inspiration. Her production credits include: SIDDHARTH, written by Richie Mehta (2013, TIFF Selection, Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay), BLACKBIRD written by Jason Buxton, winner of the Claude Jutra Award, (nominated for Canadian Screen Award, Best Original Screenplay), produced by Marc Almon (2012); IN DARKNESS (2011), written by David Shamoon, directed by Agniezka Holland and produced by The Film Works, (nominated for an Oscar and three Genies, including Best Screenplay); and AMAL, written by Shaun and Richie Mehta (2007, also nominated for 6 Genies, including Best Screenplay) . Her television work includes Moccasin Flats, Season II, and Random Passage, an eight-hour mini-series directed by John N. Smith, produced by Passage Films and Cité-Amérique for broadcast on CBC and RTE (Eire). She is also proud to have been Story Editor Mentor to the Canadian Film Centre’s Writers Lab for the past 14 years. She acted as story editor on several Canadian Film Centre Feature Film Projects, including NURSE.FIGHTER.BOY (produced 2008, nominated for 10 Genie Awards, including Best Screenplay.)
Tammer El-Sheikh
Assistant Professor, Visual Art & Art History
Tammer El-Sheikh is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Art & Art History. He returned to Toronto in 2019, after more than 10 years in Montreal, where he taught within the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University and received his PhD in art history from McGill University.
His writing on art has appeared in scholarly journals, edited volumes, exhibition catalogues, and print and online art magazines. At the undergraduate level, he’ll be teaching Introduction to Art History, Art of the 60s, and Art of the Near and Middle East, as well as a large-enrolment blended course called Art in the City. He also leads the graduate seminar called Methods in Art History.
Caitlin Fisher
Associate Professor, Cinema & Media Arts
Caitlin Fisher’s primary research investigates the future of narrative through explorations of interactive storytelling and interactive cinema in Augmented Reality environments. Current research interests also include digital archiving, lifelogging, data visualization and experimental game structures for storytelling. Professor Fisher was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture in 2004. She is a co-founder of the Future Cinema Lab, dedicated to the exploration of new stories for new screens, and director of the Augmented Reality Lab in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York. In the AR Lab, she is working to construct and theorize spatial narrative environments and build expressive software tools for artists.
Ian Garrett
Associate Professor, Theatre
David Gelb
Associate Professor, Department of Design
David Gelb is a co-lead of eLearning @ AMPD with Judith Schwarz and Michael Longford supported by the Academic Innovation Fund at York University. David’s research is focused on both design and education. His pedagogic work examines the way that participatory technologies augment design learning with particular emphasis on artefact collaboration and building design knowledge. His practice includes interactive design, user-centered research methods and mobile interface design. David’s current teaching includes a range of interactive, research methods and motion design courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Brian Grosskurth
Associate Professor, Visual Art & Art History
Brian’s research focuses on modern and contemporary art history and theory. His current research interests includes work on contemporary art and philosophy, contemporary public sculpture and the relations between the arts during the Romantic era. His blended course 19th Century Western Art features face-to-face lectures with Moodle as the subsidiary online component for teacher-student communication.
Tim Hampton
Director of Computing Services, AMPD
Tim joined York University in 1994 and then AMPD in 2002. While at Atkinson, Tim was in charge of the infrastructure in support of online learning and a member of the York TEL committee which explored online learning from an instructor’s pedagogical perspective. In recent years, AMPD Computing has been central to the delivery of Moodle support as well as media production for online courses.
Lillian Heinson
Instructional Technology Coordinator, AMPD
Lillian joined the Computing team in 2010. She provides assistance for instructors in preparing their online/blended courses as well as technical support.
Gillian Helfield
Contract Faculty, Cinema & Media Studies
Dr. Gillian Helfield is a lecturer specializing in Film and Television Studies, National Cinemas and Humanities at York University in Toronto. Other areas of interest include, Cultural Studies, Diasporic and Exilic Cinemas, and Rural Cinema.
Currently Dr. Helfield is involved in developing and designing large-enrolment online courses for higher education. She is the recipient of the 2015-2016 AMPD eLearning Award for her course Hollywood: Old and New, which received funding from the Government of Ontario’s Shared Online Course Fund. Her course Cinema and the City received funding from the Academic Innovation Fund, and was YorkU’s nomination for the Brightspace Innovation Award in 2015-2016.
Shelley Hornstein
Associate Professor, Visual Art & Art History
Shelley Hornstein is the recipient of the inaugural 2013-2014 AMPD eLearning Award for her Art History course Memory and Place. The course included audio mini lectures, synced with visuals to accompany text-based materials. Her research explores the intersection of memory and place in architectural and urban sites. She is currently working on projects that explore demolition, Google Earth and museums in virtual space, Starlets and Starchitecture, Jewish topographies, and architectural tourism.
Chris Ironside
Part-time Contract Faculty, Visual Art & Art History
Chris is a Toronto-based artist dealing in the currency of gay images. He draws and photographs, decontextualizes song lyrics and glitters with aplomb. He exhibits his drawings and photographs throughout North America. Recent commissions, publications and exhibitions include Headmaster Magazine, C Magazine, Four Eleven Gallery in Provincetown and the Art on Paper Fair in New York City. In 2017 the Art Gallery of Peterborough will be exhibiting his photo series, Mr. Long Weekend, in a solo show at the gallery. Currently, he teaches photography in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University.
Katherine Knight
Associate Professor, Visual Art & Art History
Katherine Knight is the recipient of the 2015-2016 AMPD eLearning Award for her Visual Arts courses Critical Issues in the Studio and The Photographic Experience. She has converted a number of large format courses from in-person lectures to blended format classes, utilizing Moodle tools such as Gallery, Book, and Journal to engage with her students. Her courses integrate a weekly online classroom that steps students through Reviewing, Reflecting, and Creating.
Katherine’s research and creative work explores the intersection of private and public experience through landscape-based approaches using the still and moving image, often incorporating text and archival material. Through her production company, Site Media Inc., she creates documentary films on leading Canadian artists.
Leslie Korrick
Associate Professor, Visual Art & Art History
Formerly of the interdisciplinary Fine Arts Cultural Studies program, Faculty of Fine Arts, at York University (1999-2011), Dr. Leslie Korrick is currently an Associate Professor in York’s Department of Visual Art and Art History. She is appointed to the graduate programs in both Art History & Visual Culture and Science & Technology Studies and is a recipient of the Faculty of Fine Arts Senior Teaching Award (2006-2007). Prior to joining York, Dr. Korrick held appointments at the University of Manitoba, Queen’s University, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Traversing periods and geographies, Dr. Korrick’s research and teaching focus on intersections between the arts; constructions of culture through art forms, architecture, urban spaces, collecting, and display; art-science relations; and sound studies. She is leader of the soundseminar, an inter-university, multi-disciplinary research group of theorist-practitioners exploring sound as a medium of artistic practice and cultural marker, and a member of the editorial collective for InTensions, an e-journal on the theatricality of power and sensory regimes.
Michael Longford
Associate Professor, Computational Arts
Michael Longford is the Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design. He is a co-lead of eLearning @ AMPD with Judith Schwarz and David Gelb supported by the Academic Innovation Fund at York University. His research interests include the history of early wireless communications in Canada, rich media content development for mobile technologies, and locative media practices. In his creative practice, he has collaborated on a number of projects exploring the ways in which mobile technologies can be used to animate public space.
Natasha May
Educational Developer, Teaching Commons
Natasha is the primary point of contact in the Teaching Commons for the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design. Within her role, she has provided support in pedagogy and the design of courses or modules that involve an eLearning component. Specifically, Natasha has worked with faculty receiving eCampus Ontario and AIF funding. Natasha also oversees the teaching development programs for graduate students in the Teaching Commons and co-teaches a blended course, the EDC accredited Teaching Assistant Certificate in Teaching (TACT).
Pranay Noel
Video production, AMPD
Pranay Noel is a filmmaker currently pursuing a BFA in Film Production at York University, specializing in fiction film direction and picture editing. Pranay works with AMDP and AIF’s team in video production and editing.
Angela Norwood
Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Design
Angela Norwood is a recipient of the Faculty of Fine Arts Dean’s Junior Faculty Teaching Award and teaches across the Design curriculum, from first year foundation courses through masters thesis supervision, with an emphasis on information design. Her current research interests include examining the role of design in indigenous communities through social, cultural and cognitive aspects of wayfinding and signage systems, advertising, and design pedagogy. She has conducted workshops on this topic in Ladakh, India. She is a former professional graphic designer having worked in Chicago, IL and Raleigh, NC. Currently, Professor Norwood is a designer and consultant on the global marketing team for Democrats Abroad, an organization that empowers US citizens in 71 countries to participate in US elections. Her work has been published in design journals such as Visual Communication and Design & Culture, and recognized by several organizations and publications including the Type Directors Club, Graphis and Communication Arts magazines. Her work is included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) National Design Archive.
